Chapter 7

But I have promises to keep: And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

When the cool days of October had settled in Kathleen and Dr Yang left St Barnabas Hospital in Anguo for the first experimental trip to the villages. They were met in Tangxian by Mr Tang who had come down from Beijing by train in the night. He would act as their interpreter where the village dialects were spoken. Kathleen had planned this trip for months. There had been lists of equipment added to and then refined as they looked at how they would carry it all into the countryside.

She had left nothing to chance. She knew that once they were away from the towns they would only have the equipment they had brought. The only job she allowed the others to do was to buy the food because she knew that the men would get the best price from the Chinese traders. They knew they would be welcomed by the villagers and offered hospitality but three extra people would put a strain on village resources. It was too much to expect to be fed when possibly there would be barely enough food for the people themselves.

While Dr Yang and Mr Tang were negotiating the price for the food in Tangxian, Kathleen took the opportunity to visit the recently built Salvation Army Hospital which was run by an English couple, Dr and Mrs Swain. She was impressed to see that they had x-ray equipment, something she lacked in her hospital at Anguo. In fact the hospital was better equipped than any that Kathleen had worked in since her days at PUMC. It was a worthwhile meeting as the Swains were interested in the project Kathleen outlined. She asked if they would be prepared to take into their hospital any seriously ill patients from the villages where she planned to work. They agreed immediately to help her whenever they could.

At four o'clock the next morning Kathleen and the men were up. It was a full moon so they could begin their journey early. There were three carts heavily laden with food, drugs, dressings and general equipment, as well as their own bedding. When Kathleen saw how loaded down the donkey was carrying her things, she wished she could have left some of her bedding and thick winter clothing behind. It was as well that she didn't. While the month of October would be cool, by their return in November it would be freezing cold and she would need all her warm clothing.

The drivers were worried that there was nowhere for Kathleen to sit on the carts and tried to make a space for her. She managed to convince them that she wanted to walk because it would be quicker than sitting on top of a cart. The road was rocky and for the first part flat. Little did Kathleen realise that this journey would be the first of many. The terrain was rugged and often the road was little more than a track. By the time the sun came up they had reached the bare lower slopes of the hills and could see the mountainous hill country which was their destination.

At lunchtime they had reached Xiashe and were met by three large cheerful men from Songjizhuang who had brought pack animals from their village to complete the journey. The road, such as it was, stopped at Xiashe, and from then on they would journey along dirt tracks. It was imperative that they get moving quickly because the tracks were not well marked and they wanted to get to the village before dark. The men were concerned that in the dark the animals, so heavily laden, might stumble and fall.

After a steady climb they came, in the late afternoon, to a broad valley where two mountain rivers met. The confluence raced down across the rocks. There was no bridge so they had to take the loaded donkeys carefully across the swift water. Kathleen was faced with a dilemma. Traditionally it was considered indecent in China for a woman to expose her feet. Mr Tang had already taken off his shoes and socks and crossed the river leading one of the donkeys. If she took off her shoes and stockings she would have embarrassed all the men in the party. If she kept them on, a donkey would have to be unloaded to carry her across. The animal would then have to be brought back and the load repacked. She didn't want to cause any further delays, but in the end she said nothing and meekly waited for them to remove the luggage so the animal could ferry her across.

Determined that this would not happen again, she found out how many more streams there were to cross. She then strode ahead, crossed on her own, and was decently clad before the main party caught up with her. The torrential summer rain had swept away the log bridges which were used across the streams and rivers so the villagers did not replace them until the 9th day of the 9th lunar month when the likelihood of flooding had passed. At least by the time they made the return journey the logs would be in place, and Kathleen would not have to wade the streams.

Finally at dusk they arrived at Songjiazhuang where they were to stay for 3 days. Songjiazhuang, which meant village of the Song family was set in a valley at the foot of a strangely shaped hill. The hill was called Lotus Flower Hill because the bluffs were arranged in the shape of a lotus flower. In time the hill would become a place of solace for Kathleen: when the work seemed to overwhelm her; when she was frightened as the weight of the Japanese military spread across China; when she was lonely and isolated; when good friends were dying. It was a place to go and sit peacefully and look across the valley.

For the moment she had to get used to the mud huts fronted by open sewers. On one side of the village pond women washed vegetables and drew up water to boil for drinking; on the other side they scrubbed out their night soil buckets. The night soil itself was used as fertilizer on the fields. On hot days the children swam in the ponds. Everywhere in the fields lay the ancestral graves.²⁰ Kathleen, comfortable with eating local food, always made very sure that she ate nothing raw. She insisted that her food be scrubbed with water she had boiled before it was cooked. In this way she kept healthy and it was rare that she was ill.

The village already had some Christian converts and as soon as Kathleen had eaten, they crowded into a tiny room used as a church for Evensong. Kathleen was delighted when, after evensong, Mr Tang told bible stories and they sang hymns.

The next morning Kathleen was up early to start work at the clinic. It seemed at first that nearly every villager had a skin disease and the children had boils and 'scabby heads'. Lines of patients were waiting, and the team worked non-stop until noon. Then they operated on a stretcher case which had been waiting since the night before.

The first day was chaotic. That night they talked about how they could make the work day more efficient. Rather than just seeing patients on a first come first served basis they decided that Dr Yang would listen to the explanations of symptoms and do an initial patient examination. Kathleen agreed that she would attend to all the surface problems such as sticky eyes, suppurating ears and the variety of wounds caused by falls and mishaps with axes. Mr Tang would be the interpreter when Kathleen and Dr Yang could not understand the local dialect and also help with operations and with the outpatient clinic.

Even with these renewed efforts for efficiency the crowds did not diminish and the noise of the chatter and clatter was constant.

The second day in the village was a Sunday. They held a church service early in the morning and then went straight back to work after breakfast. As they had planned to spend only three days in Songjiazhuang there was no time for the luxury of a day of rest.

In three days they saw over 250 new cases as well as a number of people who suffered from a previous accident or ailment and had come in for a check up. By Monday night they were exhausted. However, everything had to be cleaned and packed ready for the journey further up the mountain to Niuyangou. They were also taking with them a boy whom they had operated on who still needed to have his dressings changed regularly and Kathleen wanted to keep an eye on him until he was fully recovered. The boy's mother also came and walked alongside the litter as they followed the track up through the hills.

Halfway between the two villages they were met by the men from Niuyangou. The villagers from Songjiazhuang who had travelled with them transferred all the equipment from their donkeys on to the ones the men from Niuyangou had brought. With cheerful goodbyes the Songjiazhuang men turned back down the hill to their village and Kathleen, Dr Yang, Mr Tang, and the sick boy and his mother, continued on uphill with their new escorts.

On the outer edge of the village land the group passed through the plantations of red date trees. This had once been a profitable crop for the village until a grub had attacked the trees and eaten all the young leaves and gradually the trees had withered and died. Kathleen thought it a terrible waste that nothing had been done to eradicate the grub but it was an indication of the poverty of the area. There was neither the money nor knowledge to do anything about the disaster.

At last the group arrived at Niuyangou and they were met by villagers excited that finally the doctor had arrived.

We passed up the principal street - a narrow way between houses with a little stream running down the middle. Then we turned up the hill, past several threshing floors cut out of the hillside and leveled and rolled hard and smooth, past the little church school on its terrace in the hollow of the hill, up to the church terrace, where there is a fair-sized room, which for twenty days was to be hospital, meal-room, social room, and my bedroom. Dr Yang had a room down below in the school with Mr Liu the catechist, Mr Chang the teacher, the school boarders and the servants. The two evangelistic workers had a room opening out of mine, and Mr Tang was still higher up on the hill.²¹

The next morning the team began work and once again the first few days were hectic. The experiences of Songjiazhuang meant they were quicker at organizing a routine. When there were operations to be done, patients were told to come at daybreak and they operated as soon as it was light.

The operating table consisted of three forms from the church which were rather unsteady on the packed-earth floor. They had to leave a space between two forms wide enough for the women who had false hair. This very complicated arrangement on the back of their heads was too difficult and time consuming to undo, and so it was simpler and quicker to leave a crack where the hair could fit between when they wanted the women to lie flat. The instrument table was a desk from the school. When the operation was completed the patient was lifted off the makeshift operating table and tucked into Kathleen's camp bed to sleep off the anaesthetic. The team would work until it was too dark to see.

When all the patients had been seen at the clinic, the team visited those who had been operated on and changed their dressings. Then, after the evening meal of millet and vegetables, the school children and some of the women would come and help Kathleen prepare bandages for the next day's work. It was during this time that Kathleen would tell bible stories and teach simple songs.

While they worked through the day at the clinic, something of a carnival atmosphere prevailed in the village. Many people trekked across difficult stony paths from as far as 60 miles away to reach the clinic. Often they would have to wait three or four hours before they could be seen. It was not long before stalls were set up in prominent places around the church selling all sorts of small edibles.

As well as making a commercial proposition out of the numerous visitors to their village, the people of Niuyangou were also friendly and helpful and ready to house the travellers. In one of the houses there were 30 patients, three of them post-operative and unable to walk.

Every minute of her time in the village Kathleen used to the best advantage. As well as helping with operations and managing treatments, she also began a preventative health programme. She had brought with her a number of posters, which, with Mr Tang's help, she explained to the fascinated audience.

Such pictures as a baby having a bath, and a child brushing its teeth intrigued the people who had never seen soap or a toothbrush. They were delighted at the enlarged pictures of flies, mosquitoes, bedbugs, and particularly the lice which had a home in every village house.

On the last day, when they thought they had finished and were ready to start cleaning and packing, one more child was brought suffering from Entropia. Kathleen had already done several of these small operations. Entropia is caused by the eyelid turning inwards on the eyeball; the lashes rub against the eye and cause irritation. It can form ulceration on the cornea. It had taken the family all day to bring the child to the clinic, so with Mr Tang holding a torch she and Dr Yang completed their final operation.

In the twenty days at the village the little medical team had seen 1424 cases, treated another 1221 return cases, performed 4 operations with general anaesthetic, 18 minor operations with local anaesthetic and 56 very minor operations, such as incisions and extractions without anaesthetic.

The work underlined what Kathleen had suspected - that there was a need for medical aid in these remote areas. She knew that some villages with a small sum of money might send long distances for Chinese medicine or sometimes they would send for a sorceress to call upon the gods. Usually these methods were useless and a waste of the small resources in the village. She wanted to change that and provide a better system to improve the health of the people she had come to admire.

We saw all manner of diseases medical and surgical. As many of the former are the result of great poverty and hardships, it is almost impossible to deal with them adequately. But education and cleanliness would do away with a great deal. For these dear lovable people are very ignorant and very dirty. The suffering of the children is terrible and much of it might be avoided if the parents could be taught the ordinary rules of hygiene. But the happiness of these people, so full of fun and good humour, under such hardships, and their friendliness and helpfulness to each other could not but make a strong impression upon us - as also their faith and their simple trust in their Heavenly Father.²²

Back at Anguo Kathleen had a visit from her friends Mr Britland and Beryl Stephens who had brought with them some new missionaries. One of the newcomers was very impressed at how well Kathleen and Beryl spoke Chinese, and commented, "They chatter away so nicely in Chinese." The visitors also saw how happy and at home Kathleen was, even though, as one of them observed, 'she was the only foreigner living there'. When Mr Britland celebrated communion the next day they were further impressed to see that there were 36 communicants, more than at the bigger parish at Hejian.

The response was mostly a result of Kathleen's example. She tramped, healed and consoled, and although she was often overwhelmed and tired from the huge amount of work that was to be done, she was continually cheerful, enjoying her work, feeling that she really was doing what God intended. As Jane Hunter notes, the key to the impact of missionary women on Chinese women's history lay less in their religious programme than in the secular message transmitted by their lives.²³

In 1931 a missionary wrote in the Church Gazette:

In extremes of heat and cold, in an atmosphere physically foul with evil smells, spiritually fouled with evil thought-emanations, with unsuitable food, lonely, slandered, tempted, breaking under the load of responsibility, still the life to show forth the love of Christ in the midst of heathen darkness - that is the victory.²⁴

Back in New Zealand it was still a major problem to raise enough money to support the work of the missionaries. When Beryl Stephens went home for a year because her family needed her, the SPG noted that it eased the strain on their finances. On the other hand, her absence strained the people who were left in the field to do the work.

Grumbling beneath the crust of China was the impending full scale war between the Communists and the Guomindang. They had split from the uneasy relationship they previously had and Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Guomindang, flitted between old warlord leaders and his secret society connections. Unlike Sun Yatsen and his wife, Soong Qing-ling, who held to the three principles of Sun Yat-sen ²⁵ and continued to work for a unified China, Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Mei-ling, who was Soong Qing-ling's sister, tried to maintain the prime position of power and courted the United States of America for money and supplies.

While Kathleen worked at her Anguo clinic trying to make a difference to the people who came for treatment and to inculcate Christianity, further north the Japanese were instigating their own plans for their proposed takeover of the whole of China.

On the 18 September 1931, the Japanese set off a series of explosions on the railway line at Mukden. The Chinese army, believing it was an attack, responded, and the Japanese then had the excuse they needed to prove that the Chinese were the aggressors. Chiang Kai-shek would not risk his troops in battle because he was already having problems with his own supporters, so he ordered Zhang Xueliang to withdraw his men south of the Great Wall. Manchuria became Japanese territory.

Since 1925 the ex-emperor of China, Puyi, had been living in the Japanese concession Tianjin and when the question arose as to who would be the leader in Manchuria, the Japanese answer was, Puyi.

He had been convinced by the Japanese, and his own desire, that he would be the leader of Manchuria; whether as an independent state or a monarchy was never made clear, but Puyi believed that his destiny was to recreate his family's Manchu heritage, and he agreed to go secretly to Lushun in Manchuria. At first he was not to be given the title of emperor but had to accept the lesser nomenclature of Chief Executive of the State of Manchukuo, the name the Japanese gave to Manchuria.

China, already rent with internal warfare, nevertheless became deeply concerned about the repercussions of the Mukden incident. Deeper feelings of anti-Japanese and anti-foreign attitudes became evident, and boycotts in Shanghai bit so deeply into the foreign community that a State of Emergency was called and troops were spread around the International Settlement for protection.

Fighting broke out between Japanese marines and the Guomindang 19th Army in Zhabei, an area in Shanghai, and, on 29 January 1932, a Japanese naval officer gave the order to bomb Zhabei. This was a poor Chinese residential district and the people killed were innocent civilians. There was an international outcry and finally an armistice was signed in Shanghai in May 1932.

Japan, however, was determined to secure a base in North China and a year later Japanese troops again attacked the Chinese army. They had bribed local generals and old warlords to either defect or to create rival organizations. It was divide and rule. Demoralised, the Chinese army sued for peace.

The resulting Tanggu Truce had severe stipulations. From a line north east of the Bai River in Hebei province there would be a demilitarized zone. It was to be patrolled only by Chinese police units and they must 'not be constituted of armed units hostile to Japanese feelings'.²⁶

The Japanese were to retreat to the Great Wall, except for the troops which kept the way open to Beijing. At any time the Japanese could send 'spotter' planes to check that the army was not in any way breaking the truce. A corridor, which the Chinese would find difficult to close in the future, had been created for the Japanese.

In March 1934, Puyi, gowned in his imperial dragon robes which had been sent from Beijing, announced his succession at the Altar of Heaven in his new capital city Changchun. He took for his title the name Kangde, which meant 'period of virtuous peace'. Kangde, now isolated by his upbringing, ego, and his Japanese masters, appeared to give little thought to the hardship Chinese people were experiencing.

Kathleen knew about the hardship. Closer to the lives of the villagers and the ordinary people, Kathleen saw the pain and suffering and wrote:

The sufferings of the people have been appalling and at times we have felt overwhelmed with our inability to cope with it all. Owing to oppressive taxation for military purposes and the spread of banditry, also the occupation of Manchuria by Japan, homeless beggars are scattered all over the country and are living like animals. In some of the villages in Hejian and Anping districts, about one third of the population have become beggars, and a good many of our Christians are among them.

The continued rise in the cost of living, and the increased cost of all medical supplies imported from abroad have made the carrying on of hospital work with any degree of efficiency difficult.

We cannot afford to keep more than a small percentage of beds for free patients. Such patients often manage to come to the out-patient department for daily treatment. [Outpatient treatment was free.] The loyalty and devotion and true missionary spirit of service among nurses in their care for the suffering and also, sometimes running night schools in their off-duty time for education and uplift of poor children and illiterates, the joy that has come to many patients in the restoring of sight, the healing of mind and body, and in hearing the Gospel message and learning of the love of a Heavenly Father - all these things give us cause for great thankfulness. In spite of the distress in the country the Chinese Church offertories taken upon Hospital Sunday have been most encouraging, and the St Lukes Guild of Service, the Women's Auxilliary of the Peiping Cathedral ²⁷ and the pupils of Fu Chih School have continued to provide the hospitals with a wonderful number of sheets, bedding, and patient's clothes.²⁸

The war and the resultant poverty from inflated taxes brought yet another problem, even more insidious. Kathleen referred to it as 'the curse of opium'. Sick and emaciated patients would be dragged to the door of the hospital and left to die. Apart from giving them one of the precious beds at the hospital, there was nothing much she could do for them. Life was so hard that the relief of pain and hunger on the waft of a drug had appeal.

There were some small gains and on one of her village visits in the Tangxian district with Dr Yang, she had been encouraged by the faith and happiness of those who had become Christians in spite of their hardships and sufferings. Simple rules of cleanliness had made a difference to the health of the people. Reluctantly though, she had to come away and leave them without any permanent help.

She was determined to find a way to make some long term difference for these people. She would think about it when she was home on furlough.

Her visit home in 1934 had an underlying sadness. Her father had died at the end of 1931 and this would be the first time she would arrive home and not have his comforting presence to welcome her. This time, as well as her usual deputation work, she had planned to do a refresher course at St Helen's Hospital in Auckland to 'rub up' her skills. This was part of her preparation for her next plan when she returned to China.

While she was in New Zealand she wrote an article for Kai Tiaki, the nurse's journal. Entitled 'Missionary Nursing in China', the article gives insight into her feelings for China.

It is very difficult for us to imagine the life of people in other countries. We read of the whole of China including the dependencies of Manchuria (which the Chinese still claim as their own!), Mongolia and Eastern Turkestan being almost twice the size of the United States; or of the eighteen provinces of China Proper being about thirteen times the size of the British Isles. We read of a population of over three hundred millions. That, perhaps, does not mean very much to us. But when we realise that it has been estimated that every fifth man in the world is a Chinese, this makes us begin to think a little about China and her people.

She also wrote:

It is noticeable that the majority of those 'foreigners' who have lived among the Chinese

people and then have to return home for reasons of health or family, leave China with

very great regret. For the Chinese are a most loveable people.²⁹

Kathleen's life now had a definite division. China had become an important part of her life. New Zealand held her family and all that was familiar, but China held the challenges and excitement of helping to make a difference. It became harder for her to settle for any time in New Zealand. Her face was pointed to China and everything she did in New Zealand was done with thoughts of how it would benefit the people in the villages. New Zealand was the place of her birth; China became the place of her heart.

In November Kathleen completed her final deputation work in Christchurch and spent Christmas at home with her family. Then in January 1935, having collected amongst other things a supply of soap and toothbrushes to give away in the villages, she began her journey back to China.

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